Google results messed up for UK SERPs
by Brian TurnerIf you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting!
Google UK results remain in disarray after a major update at the beginning of the month saw results being flooded with non-UK websites.
Suggestions of changes being tested came up at the end of April and periodically through May, […]
December 15, 2008
New Google Features: PageLinks and Google Suggest Links
by Brian TurnerGoogle are really trying to push on new features for Google Search at present.
I’ve already covered how the local search options are now being pushed on Google UK (even though a cursory test here shows the results to be poor - try searching for the HSBC branch in Inverness - I get one IFA, a […]
December 4, 2008
New .tel domains are launched
by Brian TurnerNew .tel domains are now available for registration by trademark owners, with the aim of providing a single contact address point for companies.
A land grab will open to the public on February 3rd next year - though at a premium, with .tel domains then available at “normal” price from March 24th next year.
However, as yet, […]
November 24, 2008
Europeana crashes at opening
by Brian TurnerEuropeana, the much vaunted European library, which if memory serves was intended at least in part as a rival for Google Books, crashed at opening - and is now closed until sometime “mid-December”.
Anyone visiting europeana.eu gets the message:
” The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits […]
November 14, 2008
Nominet bitch slaps self over domaining
by Brian TurnerNominet directors are involved in a fight among themselves, resulting in the resignation of non-executive director Angus Hanton.
Interestingly enough, while Angus accuses Nominet - among other things - of not properly looking after uses, Angus, just happens to be a domainer.
If you don’t know, domaining is the process of buying nice sounding domain names, slapping […]
November 13, 2008
Google stock sees sharp decline
by Brian TurnerShares in Google continue to lose ground - GOOG is currently trading at $285/share, which down 35% since October, and almost 60% since the start of the year.
While analysts remain downbeat about Google’s earnings due to the financial crisis and world recession, the US technology sector is taking a beating as leading companies lower revenue […]
November 10, 2008
Google tanks on low expectations
by Brian TurnerAnalysts are losing their optimism for Google, with the GOOG share price now at it’s lowest for three years.
Google has seen its share price tank by 52% over this year - significantly higher than the 41% loss the S&P index has seen over the same period.
While tech stocks have been taking a hit in general, […]
November 9, 2008
Yahoo: we’ve failed, buy us
by Brian TurnerIn what is tantamount to an admission of failure, Yahoo is now inviting Microsoft to buy company and its assets:
“To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” said [Jerry] Yang.
“I don’t think that is a bad idea at all, at the right price whatever that price is. We’re willing to […]
November 2, 2008
Microsoft madness: kill MSN Groups
by Brian TurnerMicrosoft, in their wisdom, have decided to shut down their long-standing MSN Groups feature, and are asking users to move their groups to Multiply.com before February 9th, when MSN Groups will be shut down.
This was announced just a couple of weeks ago, but it seems that quite a number of MSN users just aren’t aware […]
September 6, 2008
Google: trapped in its own search box
by Brian TurnerGoogle as a brand has become synonymous with search - heck it’s even a verb. You don’t use search - you Google for something.
Yet Google’s powerful brand connection with search hasn’t allowed the brand to lead in other areas, despite Google’s repeated attempts to broaden its reach.
Conversely, other brand names have failed to lead in […]
September 2, 2008
Google Chrome - the Google Browser finally launching
by Brian TurnerAfter years of speculation, Google have finally announced that they are launching their own Google Browser - known as Google Chrome.
Google Blogoscoped provides a detailed run down on details prematurely released by Google, but this include:
- Google Chrome is an open-source browser project
- JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, to speed up script execution
- Special tabs […]
August 26, 2008
Why Yahoo should be franchised
by Brian TurnerTechcrunch published a story by Serkan Toto yesterday highlighting how Yahoo! Japan is worth almost as much as Yahoo! itself, with market caps of $22 billion and $27 billion respectively.
While YHOO shares have fallen slowly over the past couple of years, Serkan makes a big point of how having a dynamic company run by a […]
July 7, 2008
A Soviet Internet controlling the EU?
by Brian TurnerAccording to a report on the BBC, the EU is due to vote on a bill on July 7th that aims to ban internet pirates from the net, and allow governments to vet what software can be used online.
The quote says it all:
digital rights campaigners [say] anti-piracy lobbyists have hijacked the telecoms laws and tabled […]
AVG spams internet
by Brian TurnerAccording to reports from The Register, AVG have been spamming the internet with fake traffic as they look for malware.
Using automated crawlers claiming IE6 as their user-agent, the aim is apparently to seek out malware.
But the result of their AVG LinkScanner has been to eat up bandwidth and cause big traffic spikes across the net.
Apparently […]
June 13, 2008
Is this the end of Yahoo?
by Brian TurnerYahoo! remains one of the most popular sites on the internet, and their publishing strategy has reaped dividends.
Yet their inability to monetise their own ad platform has left the company underperforming.
However, a Yahoo!-Google partnership can only kill Yahoo’s long-term interests.
Today’s announcement of a Yahoo! - Google advertising relationship could signal the end of […]
May 7, 2008
Is Facebook dying?
by Brian TurnerJesse Farmer posts what could turn out to be an observation of a tipping point - and decline - for Facebook may be on the cards.
In The State of the Facebook Platform Jesse charts the growth of Facebook application development, and comes to the interesting conclusion that development activity is dying.
The observation comes from tracking […]
April 28, 2008
10 reasons why Yahoo search sucks
by Brian TurnerBecause Google is synonymous with “search” and effectively monopolises the global online search market, many of us look to rivals to at least try and even out the playing field.
The big problem is that these “rivals” often sabotage their own competitiveness by failing to focus on the user experience - despite the fact that this […]
April 25, 2008
Why spam pays
by Brian TurnerSpam pays. Pure and simple.
It’s an annoying fact of life, but when business follows evolutionary principles where the winners are those who can out-compete rivals, it’s an approach that some business models can thrive on.
Spam
What do I mean by spam?
For many people, when talking about Google, spam is nothing more than SPAM = […]
April 18, 2008
Libel your competitors with Google Adwords
by Brian TurnerIt’s easy to libel third-parties - and competitors - with Google Adwords.
The ads go through without review, and Google appears oblivious to its obligations under legislation regarding defamation in the UK.
I know this for a fact because some unhappy bunny attempted the same on my company name over the past 2 months.
The only way to […]
April 2, 2008
Google.com still blocked from the UK
by Brian TurnerGoogle.com still remains inaccessible to ordinary UK internet users, making it almost a week since the issue was first spotted.
UK internet users are still unable to access Google.com, because of the way the internet giant geotargets and redirects users.
Google already applies geotargeting to automatically force direct requests for Google.com from UK IP’s to Google.co.uk.
While there […]